Apart from medical or health expenses, there are some more expenses associated with the advancing years of a person’s life. A person growing old might not be actually ill or sick, but he or she might be unable to carry out routine activities such as eating, bathing, cleaning, walking, etc., on his/her own. In such situations, admission into a nursing home or a long-term care facility would be required, and a long-term care insurance policy should be bought to protect against such expenses.

A lot of children are staying far away from their parents and are unable to tear themselves away from their work or business at a short notice. This has led to many couples opting for long-term care, for which they take elder care insurance. This is a good idea by itself, but there are two problems—long-term care is becoming costlier by the day, and the long-term insurance companies are getting stricter in their underwriting standards. To get the most out of your long-term care insurance without having to pay through your nose, here are four things you can do.

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• Don’t mix policies
  To save on the premium amount, many couples opt for a hybrid policy that offers a combination of life insurance and long-term health insurance. If one of the insured persons dies, the other gets the life insurance amount, while if they both continue to live, they can jointly or singly opt for long-term care. The premium is generally charged as a one-time lump sum payment instead of a recurring payment. All this sounds nice, but the fact is that neither life nor long-term care are covered adequately. It is better to buy two separate policies for these two separate needs.
• Get in early
  The earlier the decision to opt for long-term care is taken by a couple, the lower their premiums will be. This sounds pretty simple, but this is a decision that most couples get wrong. They go through major medical expenses and then realize that they might need long-term care sooner or later. They then start looking around for a good policy. But when they look for the best long-term care insurance, they find it very expensive and above their budget. If they had opted for the same policy a decade ago, they would have had to pay a lot less for it.
• Home vs. hospital
  Given the rising costs of insurance, it is a good idea to consider whether long-term care is actually needed or whether home care is a viable option. If a couple has the wherewithal to arrange for home care by themselves, it would be much cheaper than opting for long-term care at a facility.
• Increase elimination period
  Most long-term care insurance policies provide the option of choosing the date from which the insurer starts paying the expenses. The gap between this date and the date from which the policy is purchased is called the elimination period, and the longer this gap, the lower the premium cost.

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